News

A new report from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the RAND Corporation aims to define and analyze the practices and performance of schools focused on personalized learning. It concludes that while early efforts are promising, there remain practical and systemic barriers to expanding programs that aim to tailor instruction to individual students’ needs and skills.

On November 4th, charter school operator Uncommon Schools held a day-long professional development session for district teachers only in Brooklyn. More than 200 school teachers participated in the session, the second of four yearly training sessions in New York City. Uncommon Schools is hoping to increase charter school collaboration with district schools.

The number of charter schools surpassed 6,000 at the start of the 2012-13 school year, as these schools – publicly financed, but privately run – steadily increased by 7 percent throughout the United States that year. This annual growth contributed to a 47 percent increase in the number of charter schools over the seven years since 2006-2007.

In this article, the author discusses strategies that in the future may increase school choice and charter schools in rural areas, including virtual charter schools and alternative transportation options such as self-driving cars.

This poll conducted by Education Post includes opinion from a nationally representative sample of 1,800 randomly selected individuals with either children or grandchildren between the ages of 3 and 18, with oversamples of Black and Latino parents/grandparents and includes data on public favorability of charter schools.

Several charter school networks across the nation are serving district-sized student populations. Success Academy Charter Schools in New York City will have 50 schools serving 16,300 students by 2016. By 2020, the KIPP network will serve 120,000 students across the nation. IDEA charter schools in Texas will serve 40,000 students by 2020, while Houston-based YES Prep estimates serving over 20,000 students in Texas and other states.

Mathematica recently completed a report on The Equity Project (TEP) Charter School in New York City, which achieved attention before opening in 2009 for its salaries of $125,000 and substantial professional responsibility for teachers. TEP’s students are primarily low-income and Hispanic.

In this article from the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, author Warren Simmons argues that chater school operators need new standards to encourage them to develop innovative strategies for learning as well as being fully transparent and accountable to the communities they serve.

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